Norwich Playhouse

Norwich Playhouse

I have steeped myself in Porter, in a manner of speaking, for the past week: whizzing through Fall Out, her recent autobiography of life in the Sixties and Seventies. It is a book she is now promoting up and down the country.

Personally, I'm a sucker for all things Sixties. And with its endless descriptions of the clothes and people of the time (Ossie Clark this, Dorothée Bis that and Zandra Rhodes the other) I was sure to be hooked.

But it was hard to see what JST had actually felt or thought during the period. This was a glancing account full of glitter. A perfect mirror.

On stage, would we see the person behind the prose?

Not a chance.

As she stepped out, clad in a sumptuous backless blue frock, she was already describing herself as an icon. And although we flicked through her four marriages, her views on relationships and even learnt that she was once given a cue on live telly by a techie sticking his hand up her skirt, she never really revealed anything.

But that's the art of modern celebrity. And let's face it, she was one of its inventors, so she ought to know how it's done.